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A weekend with friends.
I don’t know the last time I did something clichéd like go camping or have a picnic on a holiday weekend. I think most of these sorts of things just get turned into any other day for people like me. When you’re a freelancer, every day is Monday and every day is Saturday so holidays were just days when the post office is closed and there are more people on the road making all kinds of traffic and beaches are crowded.
But now I have a kid in school and everything is different! I have to set an alarm to make sure we get up in time and then I watch the clock to make sure I don’t forget to pick her up from school. Imagine that, I’m a slave to the work-week schedule just like anyone else. And you know what that means besides making me an annoyed clock-watcher? Holidays and weekends are more special now! Woooo-Hooooo! TGIF means something to me now!
So you know what Bug and I did for our very first special holiday weekend? We went camping. With friends. For the WHOLE weekend. It was awesome.
First we hung out with these monkeys.
This baby is so photogenic.
Then we went to the beach. Good thing I had my new handy-dandy smart phone since I forgot to charge the batteries for my handy-dandy underwater camera.
This is Carrien (pronounced Kareen) who I met through this blog. Funny how that works. (I have a better picture of her further down.)
Then we went to her in-laws and camped in their front yard. As you can see their front yard is nothing to sneeze at. I didn’t do a very good job at taking an establishing shot (perhaps I was too busy having fun) but the inside of their house was amazing and I did manage a few random shots here and there. I hope they don’t mind me posting.
I loved it there. It felt like home. Someday I want to have a home like this. Maybe not as big (they have eight kids) but as welcoming. That was what made it special. It was this big sprawling ranch house with art everywhere and a long country table that invited you to sit down with your coffee AND your laptop. I loved that there were probably at least four or five laptops sitting around at all times. Nobody thought it was rude if you looked down to check your phone.
Carrien’s husband, Aaron, made me Turkish coffee. It was really good with a lot of sugar and no cream. I’d never tried it before but I found I liked it. Like that’s a big surprise. Any kind of coffee made with care is probably going to go over really well with me. I was happy. Coffee, wifi, good company…it was wonderful. I could spend the whole weekend there and I did!
Bug was having her own kind of fun: kids and bouncing. They had a trampoline and a swing-set and a clubhouse and of course lots of hills and trees and rocks to explore. She was in heaven.
There was pomegranate picking…
and chickens
and egg collecting (photo by Aaron)
And a fire pit! We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows.
And then we camped under the stars.
Camping bedhead brought to you by Instagram!
Also, it rained! At 4 o’clock in the morning I felt this faint mist on my face. I thought it was a very pleasant dream but then I woke up and quickly went into survival-girl mode. I put the rain guard on in the dark as lightning flashed around me. Within minutes the raindrops fell. It wasn’t a very heavy rain but it was enough to soak one of the other tents that didn’t have a rain guard. I’m glad I’m one of those people who wakes up pretty easily otherwise this post would have been about a whole other kind of adventure.
We did have a visit from the ranch dogs who were terrified of the lightning but thankfully Bug was pretty aggressive at telling them to get out while I was outside putting on the rain guard. Living with my mom’s dog, Spreckles, has definitely taught Bug how to handle dogs with authority. She’s no wimp.
You’d think that would sum up our super-fun weekend but you would be wrong. We also went to church (after camping!) and to La Jolla for a picnic lunch and some tide pool sight-seeing.
At one part there was a ravine full of kelp. We were all curious how deep it went. So of course we had to investigate.
It was about a foot and a half deep. The kids had a blast walking around in it, jumping in it and generally slipping and sliding and not paying attention to the try-not-to-get-wet admonishments. Who are we kidding? We all knew they were going to get soaking wet anyway. It’s the beach and they are kids!
So they sported the side-knot—a new look for fall.
AND THEN!! As if we hadn’t done enough, we went to a birthday party and the kids slid down this thing:
I’d never even seen one of these before. What a riot! I really should have gotten a swimsuit on and tried it myself but it was in the late afternoon and I was too busy sitting with my mom-friends chatting.
It’s safe to say that everyone slept well after this day. Rain or no rain.
We were very sad to go home. I think I’m adding their neighborhood to my list of possible places to move in June.
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Fiesta! Kittens! Bad News! Olé!
I have been trying to write about the little fiesta we had this weekend since it happened. But life has been driving me off the road like some kind of crazy testosterone-driven maniac with big tires and blinding high beams. I know, I need to stop complaining about that. It’s a good thing. But sometimes I miss being bored on long afternoons and writing posts about everything under the sun just for kicks.
The fiesta was wonderful. I’ve been wanting to have a summer party out here in the sticks since before I even moved in. I might live in a trailer in the middle of nowhere but it sits on a lot that is the perfect setting for an outdoor party. If only I could figure out a way to move this whole place to the beach.
There are covered patios on both sides and a backyard that seems to go on forever. It is hotter than heck in the daytime and sometimes you feel like your face is going to melt off but when the sun starts setting, it is glorious. Big skies, a soft breeze, my giant saguaro cactus majestically casting long shadows as we sip some sort of beverage and listen to mariachi music softly playing in the background…sometimes I feel like I’m in Mexico—in a good way.
I couldn’t wait to share summer in the sticks with my friends. Or maybe I just feel the neeeeeeeeed to have a party two times a year. It could be the latter.
Also, Bethany is in town and she didn’t seem to mind kicking off her visit with a meet-up with all her old friends.
It was so fun to have everybody back together again.
Add some new friends.
And some really old friends (like way back from second-grade best friend kinda friends).
Some mustachioed friends.
Some old friends fondling zucchinis from my garden. (Scandalous!)
A whole passel of kids…
and some goofballs and you got a good time!
Add some food,
And you’ve got a party!
My mom womanned the barbecue. We had carne asada street tacos, which are basically little tiny tacos that you can pop in your mouth five at a time. Well, maybe not five at a time but they were that good. I think from now on I’m going to order pizza or hire my mom to barbecue because the food went so much smoother than all the other parties I’ve ever planned. Remember the tiny cold mini-hamburgers at the princess party. Yeah, this was nothing like that.
What could top off a summer fiesta? A piñata of course? Shrek?, you’re thinking. Really? Is that the best you could do? Aren’t you artsy fartsy and into making your own piñatas or something crazy like that? Well, yes and no. I would have loved to make my own piñata but even I have limits and I reached them pretty much at eight am, the morning of the party. I did buy a super cute and cliché burro piñata at Target of all places but then my five-year-old daughter went and fell in love with the thing.
Maybe getting a cute burro in pastel colors was not such a good idea. She fell apart in a puddle of dramatic tears when all the kids started talking about how they were going to bash it to pieces to get the candy out. I tried to tell her to tough it out and made up all kinds of stories about piñata spirits being freed when they are broken by children but she was not buying it.
In the end I caved and had my mom pick up the ugliest piñata she could find at the local Mexican market. So Shrek it was. Apparently Bug has no problem beating Shrek to smithereens.
Squee! Candy!
Besides the candy, we had paletas for desert. Those things are so delicious!
And flan that my friend Jen made. Swoon! I’ve never tasted flan so good. No slimy egginess at all. I wish I had some right now.
There was even dancing.
And a sunset as a grand finally. (photo taken by Bethany) It almost makes me want to live here forever…sigh. But not quite.
But that’s not all the news! Guess what happened on the morning of the party?!!
Aqui had her kittens! Five of them! How very festive of her, right? I was a bit worried that the crowds might make her nervous so I moved her to my back bathroom shower and she stayed there happy as a clam. She didn’t even try to move them. I think the cool shower floor was much nicer for her since it’s been so hot here lately. She’s still there five days later and she’s the best mama ever. I’m kind of surprised since she’s still almost a kitten herself but she is doing a great job. All the kittens are gray just like her and they are soooo cute! At first they looked like a bunch of drowned rats but now they are fluffing up and pulling on my heartstrings like nobody’s business.
So a few days later, when Bethany and the crew and I went to the paint-your-own pottery studio, I painted a plate in their honor. This is what it looks like un-fired. I can’t wait to see what it looks like fired. It’s kinda fun. I didn’t share it with you but I’ve painted plates for Bug for each of her birthday parties (starting at the rainbow-seed party) and now we almost have a whole table set of plates that commemorate all the parties we’ve had. It’s kind of silly but fun to talk about when we sit down for dinner.
That’s the news!
Actually I have one more piece of news. Bummer news, unfortunately. You know that cook-off I was supposed to be in at Blogher this weekend? Well, they sent over the contracts for me to sign this last weekend to be a Knorr spokesperson and it was not a good fit for me. I felt terrible turning it down but I just know if I had gone through with it, I would have resented that contract until it ended in January. So, I’m sorry. We are all super bummed but there will be no secret agent cooking at Blogher and no CC either. Though we did all pitch in money so she could come down to visit a bit with us and Bethany and then get her girls so she can take them back home for school.
I’m sure something else just as fun will come along for me. It always does. And somebody else is going to have an awesome last minute surprise when they get to take my place! I can’t wait to see who they pick!
